I was trying around a little bit at a friends workstation. I’m finale user and work with some custom midi devices. I would like to change over to dorico but it seems like their are various limitations in using drumkits the way I do in finale so far.
As I have a midi-device with a lot of keys (100) where some keys need to be on the same line/position but need different notheads I only could think about creating an unpitched percussion instrument for every key, create a kit to place them in the system (5 line) and then map them via percussion map.
Usually i entered the rhytm and then used the repitch tool in finale to go over and replace note for note by pressing the keys on my device. I got over the lock function in dorico but it seems like in kits, the lock doesn’t work and pressing the keys changes the note duration and also doesn’t replace the existing note from the rhytm but adds them. Was I doing anything wrong or is it the behaviour at this stage of development? If that’s the case, I guess I have to stick with finale for now…
Welcome to the forum, @mrMoon97. You are indeed correct that the Lock Duration toggle only applies on pitched instruments.
You should be able to input the desired instruments directly using your MIDI keyboard, provided you have a suitable percussion map defined (so that Dorico understands which combination of instrument and playing technique is produced by each key), and provided you have set Dorico to expect you to input using the percussion map notes rather than as if you are entering into a treble/bass staff, via the options on the Note Input and Editing page of Preferences.
As every single note can be on a different position but dorico won’t let me to this. Remember that I only need the features of a percussion map, but the instrument is an actual pitched instrument which has to play a melody and no percussion notes.
That’s an example of how it should look like at the end:
The question is if there’s any workaround, or maybe features you are planning to include the next releases which will me allow to realize this.
As far as I can see you are not using a percussion key signature but a normal G Clef for your drum kit.
What I would do is leave your rythm in the staff you have and add a dum kit as player in the Dorico setup. That will create dependent on your layout settings a 5 line percussion staff or percussion grid. In layout options >percussion you can set this to a five line staff which is what you want.
Next you just copy your rythm from the original staff into this percussion staff and you shift the notes up or down to play the instruments you want or double (copy paste) the notes if you want to have two or more instruments sounding at the same time as in your example.
As Daniel mentioned you do have to have a drum set and associated percussion map loaded for drum kit to get sound. Easiest is to just to load one of the playback templates which comes with Dorico which will use Halion or better Groove Agent,
(You can of course also start by loading a drum kit and type in the rhythm in directly)
The cleff I’m using has nothing to do with any pitch, where the g is, is only an orientation point for the instruments key layout so we can ignore that.
That would be the actual kit setup for 5-line staff:
I don’t care about the playback. The midi devices mode is set up, that each pressed key is assigned to a unique note. This way I’m able to differ between the pressed keys even though same keys play the same note. If I would go into playback, i would have to re-map the notes to the actual notes it should play which would be nice, but not nescessary.
The only thing I care about is being able to write the notes the most efficient way. And the most forward way of doing this (for me), is to record the rhythm, and then go note for note and replace the rhytm by the actual keys pressed on my device.
This seems to be impossible right now, as simply the settings for overlapping notes in the same voice in a kit or grid presentation (all my 100 instruments have to be in the same voice), destroys the rhytm as the lock feature is not working here and either ties or trucating to shortest duration would not be correct. Finale was giving us the opportunites to use their percussion maps basically for every instrument, no matter if percussion, pitched or unpitched. Would be nice if dorico finds a way for this flexibility…
The score you show is very common and is relatively easy to implement in Dorico. There are many YouTube videos explaining how to set it up but it can not be done easily with the percussion map with 108 natural techniques you show.
Do you really have 108 different instruments in your kit which all just have 1 natural sound as your percussion map suggests or do you have a total of 108 or so sounds coming from let us say 10-15 drum kit instruments?
For example you might have a snare with 10 techniques, a kick with 5-6, each cymbal with 3-4, Pedal HH’s with 2-3 different openings, multiple woodblocks with several techniques etc. Overall the sum of number of instruments times number of techniques can easily add up to 108 different sounds.
To set this up you have to name each instrument and each technique in your percussion map lines. So you would for example have 10 snare lines but only 1 line with natural as technique.and you could have 4 “kick drum, low” lines also with only one natural line and so on.
Once that done you have to add these techniques in the setup mode by editing the playing techniques for the instruments in the drum kit in. the example you would have to define 10 for the snare (default it already has 4 common ones I think) and 4 for the kick drum low.
@mavros As I said, I have to use kind of percussion map to write for my midi instrument. The instrument itself and also the notation for it are not for drums. As the notation is a tab-notation, I have to use 100 instruments otherwise I would not be able to place the notes on the right position in the 5-line staff.
There was no need to do it like this in finale as I could just say Midi Input C0 → Middle Line and also select a notehead for it.
The 100 instruments are just there to be able to place each midi input note individual in the staff and also to be able to select different noteheads. None of these 100 instruments need any playing technique, but it seems dorico needs a default one so I assigned the natural technique to each of them. As I said, I just care about the input.
As far as I could try, the setup works. Every single note i press is exactly where I want it and also with the notehead I want. The first problem is, that I’m not able to input it the way dorico treats kit notation. Overlapping notes in the same voice in a kit either have ties or are truncated to the shortest duration which is not what I want because It destroys my rhytm. The second problem is, that I cannot lock the notes and replace them with the actual pressed key on my midi device.
Ok I understand, I should have better read your second post. You want to create a tabulature specific for your midi pad “misusing” the percussion map.
Below the example on the desired score view given in your second post in this thread. I reproduced it simply with a the full drum kit available as instrument in Dorico. I just changed a few note heads from x to the default oval in the playing techniques to get what you indicated. To get notes with the same duration aligned above each other you have to copy your original rhythm note with chord input active. So highlight the note, press crtl+c, press q, press crtl+v and shift the note to the vertical position you want with option+arrow up or down.
If you want notes with different duration above each other you don’t get around of using different voices. You would probably also need some manual alignment using the voice column index in the properties to get them aligned if you want them to have the same stem direction.
